


Happiest Place on Earth

by MikeHoncho



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Action/Adventure, Disney World & Disneyland, F/M, Family Bonding, Gun Violence, Racism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:14:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26040034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MikeHoncho/pseuds/MikeHoncho
Summary: It's Die Hard at Disney World when Dean and Alexa Ambrose finally get their honeymoon. Mayhem, chaos, and violence descend on the country's #1 tourist attraction.
Relationships: Dean Ambrose | Jon Moxley & Alexa Bliss, Dean Ambrose | Jon Moxley/Alexa Bliss
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Read it, love it, review it.

_ This is something that’s been rattling around in my head for a few months. Idk how often I’ll be able to update it, because it’s behind “the U” and “blood River” on my priorities list, but if you guys like it and want more that can be adjusted. Thanks for the input. _

_ Also, I know all my stories feature a Dean/Alexa pairing. I am fully aware. Since I read ZVArmy’s excellent  _ **_Shielded Bliss_ ** _ for the first time, they have become my favorite couple to write. I see them in my head as this wonderful combination of passion and insanity and beauty and ferocity. I hope you like this interpretation of them. _

  
  


**Happiest Place on Earth**

**_Episode one_ **

  
  


“...I’ve told you guys the story one million times before,” Alexa Ambrose spat out, prompting groans from the three other women around the kitchen table.

“It’s so cute, though,” Liv Morgan- Corbin groaned, the disappointment seeping through her tone. 

“It’s really sweet, too,” chimed Trish Stratus. “The whole point of these ‘small group’ meetings is to talk about our marriages and give each other advice. Y’all’s story inspires me.”

Liv nodded her agreement. “Plus, Sarah’s never heard it.”

Sarah Logan Rowe, who up to that point had been quietly sipping her glass of white wine, perked up slightly at the mention of her name.

“That’s okay. If you don’t want to tell it I can hear it another time.”

Alexa shook her head slightly and rolled her eyes. “It’s fine. You’ll see as you become more involved with this group that Liv and Trish just don’t have enough excitement in their lives.”

Liv raised her eyebrows and shook her head, as if to say “who, me?” 

“Look, I’m married to an accountant. I take care of my kid and go to the gym. This small group is the most interesting part of my week.”

Trish stared in mock horror at her young friend. “You really, REALLY need to get out more.”

Alexa and Sarah shared a small giggle at their friends. Trish and Liv had cultivated a very sisterly bond since meeting each other at church some five years ago. That had been where Alexa had become acquainted with Liv, through having children in the same preschool class, and how Sarah had fallen into their orbit. 

Ebenezer Gathering, the large non-denominational Christian church that all four women attended with their families, encouraged their members to become involved with “small groups,” an intimate setting in a member’s home where men, women, or couples could get together and share a meal and encourage one another. 

Trish was the clear, if unofficial, “leader” of this particular group. The oldest of the quartet, the rough and unhappy marriage she’d endured for almost a decade before finally working up the strength to leave her abusive husband made her the perfect role model for the other three. She normally hosted the meeting at her spacious home, but a dining room renovation derailed that routine. Instead, the foursome congregated at Alexa’s much more modest dwelling. 

“Fine,” Alexa huffed, much less annoyed than she was pretending to be. In truth, she enjoyed telling the tale of how she’d come into contact with her husband. She’d had another friend refer to it as a “meet-cute.” It just slightly irritated her when Trish derailed their fellowship time by chasing off-topic subjects. 

“But, once I tell it, we’re having the discussion we’re supposed to be having. Deal?”

Both Trish and Liv quickly made eye contact with one another, before nodding in almost perfect synchronization. 

“Deal.”

“Okay, so, when I was in college, I used to wait tables at this sports bar right off campus. You know the type, hot girl servers who aren’t required to wear as little as possible, but are certainly encouraged to.”

The three other women laughed. They knew exactly what Alexa was referring to, and Trish and Sarah had both also worked at similar places in another life.

“I was a Junior, so I guess I was about twenty. That was what, eight years ago?” She asked, though not to anyone in particular. After pondering this a moment, she shrugged, deciding that particular detail didn’t matter to the story, before continuing. 

“So one day this guy comes in, and he’s in his Army fatigues. Looks like he’s been through hell. I was in school at University of Florida, and we were used to getting lots of soldiers in from the base nearby, but he looked so different. He was exhausted. And like, really disheveled and ragged looking. Hadn’t shaved or gotten a haircut in weeks.”

Alexa stopped momentarily, reaching for the half-empty bottle of grocery store white wine and topping her glass off. The tiny blonde took a long sip, closing her eyes in satisfaction.

“Mmm, that’s pretty good for the Publix wine aisle. Anyway, I didn’t want to wait on him. I’d cleaned my section and was just covering for my friend Sharon while she was in the parking lot arguing with her boyfriend. So I go over there, and he looks at me like he hasn’t seen a friendly face in weeks. I introduced myself and asked if he wanted something to drink. I waited for him to answer, but he just kind of stared at me for a minute. Like he wasn’t sure what planet he was on. Finally, I guess he snapped out of it because he asked for a tall beer and twenty ‘scorcher’ wings.”

Liv snickered. “They’re all the same, aren’t they?”

Alexa grinned, allowing for a brief moment of humor before continuing. “Yeah. Anyway, he came in every day that week, at almost the same time. Ordered the same thing. When he came in that Friday, I walked straight over to him and gave him my number. I told him no one comes in that many days in a row and asks for the same server unless they’re going to either ask her out or kidnap her, and I didn’t have plans that weekend, so a kidnapping was okay, too.”

This time all three girls around the table laughed heartily. Alexa was a bastion of femininity and charm, but she had a bit of a hard edge, and no one involved in this conversation doubted for a second that if she liked Dean enough, she would’ve absolutely made exactly those comments. 

“We went out that same night. He drove me out to the Saint John’s river, like an hour or so from campus. He said he knew this little fish stand that had the best fish tacos he’d ever tasted.” She snickered to herself, tucking some unruly hair behind her ear. “He was right. I can still taste them. They were to die for. We sat in his convertible and ate tacos and drank beer out of paper cups. We listened to the radio and even slow danced a little.”

“Awww,” Liv cooed.

“Shut up,” Alexa fired back. “You’ve heard this before, remember?”

The bespectacled beauty shrugged. “I like this story.”

“Me too,” Trish chimed in.

“I was still kinda wild in those days,” Alexa continued, stopping only briefly to top off her wine glass. She lifted the green bottle slightly, non verbally offering a refill to everyone else at the table. Trish nodded, so Alexa poured as she orated.

“Like I said, I was still kinda wild back then,” Bliss admitted to her companions, refocusing her narrative. “We’d only been dating a few weeks when I moved in with him. He was everything that ‘twenty year old, first time living away from her parents’ Alexa wanted in a man. Honestly, the toughest part was getting him to talk to me. At first, he never said more than a few sentences at a time. That last undercover thing he did, where he was all scraggly and gross? It really messed him up, because it would wake him up at night sometimes. He’d be talking in his sleep and he’d sit straight up and yell and I’d have to calm him down.”

“That must’ve been really scary,” Sarah chimed in, completely enthralled with Alexa’s tale.

The pint-sized beauty chuckled. “Most of the time I was fine. It scared the hell out of Sadie, though, didn’t it, sweet girl?”

Alexa switched to a high pitched “baby” voice to talk to her prized German Shepherd lying on the floor at her feet. The now aging canine rolled over to her back, exposing her soft underbelly for Alexa to scratch. Without missing a beat, Alexa drew a breath and spoke again.

“I was still so young. Right about the time he started really opening up to me, we got pregnant with Jordan. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep her or not, but Dean was so supportive and was so adamant about loving me and the baby as best he could.” Now Alexa wiped away a tear. “He told me that whatever I wanted to do, he was okay with.” Alexa chuckled wryly in spite of her glistening eyes. “He started going to church with me and talking to the pastor and trying to be a better man. We got married at that little church. My parents drove down from Ohio and Dean’s aunt came from Ocala. It was really sweet. Gah, he was so sweet.”

Trish, ever the cynic, allowed a tiny smile to part her lips. It made her happy to see Alexa reminisce so fondly of the fledgling portion of her marriage.

“I took a semester off from school. It was worth spending the time with Jordan. Dean worked so hard I sometimes didn’t see him for two or three days. But whenever he got home, usually when I was asleep, he’d come in first thing and slide his arms around me and kiss me behind my ear. He’d tell me he loved me ‘ten thousand’ and pull me close to him. Those days with just the three of us-” 

She stopped and leaned forward in her seat, petting Sadie the German Shepherd again. “The four of us, I guess, huh Sade?” She snickered as Sadie stood to her feet, hoping for better and longer scratches from Alexa. 

“That’s basically it,” Alexa concluded, her piercing blue eyes aglow with the fond memories washing over her like a riptide. “We never got a honeymoon, which is why I’m looking forward to this trip. We need it so bad. Dean’s been at work so much lately and he’s talking about wanting another kid and-”

“Another kid?” Trish inquired, an urgency in her tone of voice. 

  
  


“Yeah,” Alexa confirmed. “Jordan’s seven and JD is five. Dean said right from the beginning he wanted a big family, and we’re almost done paying off my student loans…”

The pink-highlighted pixie trailed off. “I want more kids, too. I really do. I just-”

Trish finished her sentence for her. “You’re finally going to have your own veterinary practice and you want to get settled there first?”

Alexa nodded. It made her heart warm to know that she could always count on her surrogate sister to understand her.

“Exactly. I love him, and I’d die for him, but he frustrates me to no end sometimes…”

With that, the conversation turned to a more enlightening and engaging topic. Sarah Logan Rowe shared a bit more of her story, and each woman got to briefly inform the group as to what was going on in their lives. For Alexa, however, only two things were on her mind; her impending trip to Orlando with her husband, and the immense pressure of her office opening in just six weeks…

  
  
  
  


“That was really fun,” Trish remarked to Alexa. The remaining pair of blondes were idling in Alexa’s kitchen, mindlessly tidying and sipping the last of the wine they’d enjoyed earlier.

“It was,” Alexa agreed, setting a stack of small plates by the kitchen sink. Before she could speak again, both women’s ears were assaulted by the sounds of several small pairs of feet bounding up the basement stairs.

“Mom!” The tallest of the children called, carrying the smallest of the four children in her arms. “We finished  **Moana** !”

“I know, sweetie,” Trish responded brightly, as she softly ran an arm up and down her oldest daughter’s back. “Did you guys have fun down there?”

“Yeah!” This response came from another blonde girl, her hair in long pigtails and a huge grin on her cherubic face.

“You had fun with Stacy, Jordan?” Alexa asked her oldest daughter.

“Yep!” Came the response, emphatically and brightly. “We ate pizza and watched the movie and sang along with the songs!”

“That sounds so fun!” Alexa shot back, winking up at Trish as she spoke. “And do you think you’re gonna have just as much fun staying with Aunt Trish and Stacy and McKenzie?”

Jordan nodded, the smile on her face managing to grow wider. “I can’t wait. JD is coming, too?”

Alexa nodded enthusiastically. “Yep. For a whole week! Now, go say bye to McKenzie and then we have to get ready for bed, okay?”

Jordan shook her head in agreement. “Okay.” Without another word, she took the hand of her friend, Trish’s youngest daughter, and the two skipped toward the door, singing one of the songs from the movie they’d just finished as they headed outside. 

With an air of finality, Alexa raised her brow and turned back to her friend. “Thank you again for letting Jordan and JD stay with you while Dean and I go on our ‘honeymoon.’” The tone Alexa took with that word let Trish know how excited Alexa was for their getaway. 

“It’s no problem at all. Stacy loves your kids. She always asks when the next time she’s babysitting is, and she’s already made plans to take them places like the zoo and every park she can think of.”

Alexa chuckled. “Well, you don’t need to do all that-”

Trish cut her off with a raised hand. “I like spoiling your kids, too. They’re wonderful kids and they’re super well-behaved.”

“Mom! Can we go? I need to be home in time for  **_Riverdale!”_ **

Trish laughed again, then nodded, collecting her purse from the kitchen table. “Of course.” She turned back to Alexa, extending one arm to indicate she wanted an embrace from her soul sister. Happily obliging, Alexa slid her arm around Trish’s hips, and the two said their goodbyes, with Alexa’s heart overflowing with gratitude to whoever had brought such great friends into her life.

  
  
  


Just a couple hundred miles away, in a small swamp hovel on the border between Georgia and Florida, a different manner of “small group” was gathering in a rusted-out abandoned airplane hangar at the northern edge of what was once a thriving commercial airfield. Now, the overgrown vegetation had rendered any hope of aircraft taking off or landing obsolete. Which was fine with the current occupants of said hangar. 

A pair of motorcycles, headlights piercing the pitch blackness of rural night, came to a gradual stop in front of the open bay doors that led into the decrepit structure. The men driving those bikes slid their helmets off their bald heads almost in unison, sauntering into their new dwelling with the pronounced arrogance that befit their level of menace.

“AJ! You here?” The taller of the duo called out. After the echo of the man’s baritone finished ringing out off the arched steel beams that constituted what remained of the ceiling, a returning voice directed the two mercenaries as to the location of their query.

“Back here, Doc,” came the assertive reply. Motioning toward a much shorter back office doorway, the two roughnecks strode to where they assumed the voice was coming from.

“AJ fuckin’ Styles,” the man previously addressed as “Doc” spat out with friendly disdain. “I figured we would’ve snuck up on you. I know once you get your mind working on something your situational awareness goes all to shit.”

AJ snickered. “Sheeeit,” he warbled, his region of origin betrayed easily in his North Georgia drawl. “Doc Gallows. It’s good to see you again. I mean, kind of.”

Gallows chuckled. “No it’s not. But it’s good to have me.”

Styles nodded with agreement. “It is.” He gestured to the man at Gallows’ left shoulder. “And who’s this?”

Gallows nodded, having expected the inquiry. “This is Karl Anderson. Aka ‘the Machine Gun.’”

Styles nodded again, an impressed look on his face. “I’ve heard of you,” he intoned, sticking his hand out for his new acquaintance to shake. “You were Marines, yeah?”

Anderson confirmed with a nod of his head. “Yep. Second Battalion, Seventh Marines.”

“War Dogs,” Styles murmured in admiration. “You guys cleared out Kabul with the quickness some years back.”

Anderson snickered. “Yeah. That was insane.”

Gallows chuckled, his recollection of that mission being very different than what the news media had reported. “That was a profitable excursion, is what that was, good brother. That’s the one that made us get into private defense contracting.”

“Blackwater, right?” Styles asked.

Anderson nodded. “Yep. We were part of the ‘Premiere Incursion Crew. ‘ Saw some serious shit. Until that last thing with Cutler’s unit…”

Styles nodded, a far off look in his eyes. “Gallows told me about that. Bad bit of business.” With that, Styles motioned for his companions to follow him over to a series of blueprints and dossiers laid out on a large metal military desk. 

“So what’s this job you want us for, AJ?” Gallows asked, shifting the line of conversation away from the unpleasant maneuvers of past “wars on terror.”

Aj shook his head and chuckled humorlessly. “These assholes in Congress, man. They wanna make nice with the vermin that shout ‘death to America’ all day every day. These rich oil pricks that hamstring our economy by jacking up gas prices so high a man can’t make ends meet with his own hard work. And now the Vice President’s daughter is taking her rich ‘son of the Pakistani Ambassador to America’ boyfriend to Disney World so they can be seen holding hands and riding ‘It’s a Small World’ on Al-Jazeera.”

Karl Anderson shook his head. “Fucking liberals.”

Styles pointed his finger at Anderson, signalling his deep agreement with the short bald man’s sentiment. As he did this, he continued his soliloquy, the rage now spilling over in his tone.

“You know they met at Stanford, right? All those socialist academic types probably fawn all over themselves welcoming the son of a terrorist to their hallowed halls. I say to hell with that. I belong to a little group here,” he intimated, gesticulating all around the room as he spoke, “that believes America comes first. Most of these guys are former armed services or law enforcement, and the ones that aren’t are committed patriots who get just as sick to their stomach as I do when they see our nation’s leaders playing ‘grab-ass’ with the camel jockeys that brought down the twin towers! These same godless pricks that open our borders to compromise from the South, letting in all these cartels with their drugs. They claim to support our law enforcement yet criticize every time a cop has to make a tough choice. They cater to minorities, leaving good God-fearing white folks like you and me out in the cold while affirmative action takes our jobs away. I’m sick of this shit. All of it. So we’re gonna kidnap this kid-” Styles pointed to one dossier on the wall, indicating that it was the aforementioned son of a foreign dignitary he’d been railing about earlier.

“This is Mustafa Ali. Son of Ambassador Adeel Ali. He. his girlfriend,-” Styles paused, moving his finger to the picture directly to the left of Ali’s, “the very juicy and very monetarily valuable Carmella Van Dale, will be at the Magic Kingdom this weekend. Rumor is little Mustafa is going to propose.”

Styles shook his head violently and spat on the ground in disgust. “It sickens me that one of our oldest American families would allow their daughter to intermingle with our enemies.” AJ waved his hands in frustration at the portrait of the blonde. “Her ancestor, Ebenezer Van Dale, signed the Declaration of Independence, for shit’s sake.” 

“It’s a damn shame,” Anderson asserted, wanting to seem as though he felt much more strongly than he actually did about this issue.

“Damn right it is,” Styles agreed. “That’s why the Sword of Zion is going to do something about it.”

“The Sword of who?” Gallows asked, thoroughly confused by the turn this conversation had taken.

“Sword of Zion,” Styles repeated. “A group of about two hundred like-minded individuals who want to see the traditional values this country was founded on make a huge, epic comeback… and making tens of thousands of dollars per man involved with this in ransom money would be a pretty sweet bonus.”

Gallows and Anderson both snickered, giving each other knowing glances. This is what they’d signed up for. A chance to fleece a couple of dumb rich families blind. The politics of their former squadmate didn’t concern either man. What did concern them was getting paid. And when old money families like the Van Dales and Ali’s were involved, the potential for reward was as great as any either man had ever seen.

  
  
  
  


Alexa Ambrose couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty. She and her husband had dropped off their two children at Trish Stratus’ home, where Jordan almost didn’t wait until the car was stopped before she jumped out to join her friends, and where JD was greeted by his “Auntie Trish” with a pizza and a promise that his iPad would remain charged the entire visit. The children were so excited at the chance to be spoiled for a week that they nearly forgot to hug their parents goodbye before disappearing into the house. 

Now Alexa was completely relaxed. She sat comfortably, her legs folded underneath her in the passenger’s seat as she sipped from the trademarked green straw that signified a trip to Starbucks coffee. As she slowly enjoyed her beverage, she couldn’t help but marvel at how unguarded her husband seemed. For a significant part of their married life, Dean had appeared to be a tightly wound ball of nerves and erratic energy. When they’d gone to couples counseling two years previous, he’d opened up enough to let his beloved know that it wasn’t anything she’d done to make him so wired. On the contrary, Alexa’s calming presence had been the one thing that had kept Ambrose from going completely off the deep end. Her soothing, nurturing nature often comforted him in his darkest and most desperate moments, and Alexa couldn’t count on two hands the number of times she’d cradled his head against her chest after he’d woken up screaming from a nightmare. She’d gently shush him and press her lips to his temple, telling him in a soft voice that she was right there and he was no longer in danger.

None of that seemed to matter at the moment. Dean Ambrose was slightly slouched in the driver’s seat, one hand on the wheel, his head bobbing almost imperceptibly to “Better Now” by POST MALONE. Alexa snickered in amusement, revelling in how out of character Dean’s current carefree state was. 

“Dean Ambrose, are you enjoying songs on the radio?”

The tiny blonde couldn’t be certain, due to Dean’s eyes being covered by aviator sunglasses, but she would’ve sworn the handsome enigma rolled his eyes, while giving her the crooked smile that was one of the first things she’d been attracted to upon meeting him.

“I’m not not enjoying it, Lex,” Ambrose gravelled, his scratchy baritone as consistent as ever. “I feel a little bad, though.”

“What about?” Alexa inquired, genuinely curious as to her husband’s mindset.

“I mean, we’re going to Disney without the kids.”

Alexa grinned. “Yeah, I know, but you know Dr. Bates said we needed to take time for just us, especially when she heard we never got a proper honeymoon.” The breathtaking waif playfully ran her fingers through Dean’s shaggy mane. “We’ll save some money and take the kids next year.” 

Dean nodded. “I know. And I’m looking forward to us having some time together without the kids. As much as I love them, we’ve given up our rights to ‘alone time’ since the day we brought Jordan home from the hospital.”

Alexa scoffed. “Yeah, it’s hard when we practically have to make appointments to be intimate.”

Dean grunted in the affirmative. “Yeah, it’s not like when we first got together.” To make his point, Ambrose squeezed Alexa’s knee with his free hand, prompting a giggle and shudder from his wife.

“Don’t worry about the kids,” Alexa asserted gently, before leaning over and pecking Dean on the cheek. “Trish has an au pair, a full time chef, and a maid service. The kids will probably have more fun this week than we will.”

Dean shook his head in disbelief. He remembered vividly the events of the winter previous, when Trish Stratus had shown up at the Ambrose doorstep crying, doing her best to hide a black eye. Her husband, a very successful hedge fund manager, had finally struck the gorgeous Stratus one time too many, causing her to hire an absolute hammerhead shark of a divorce lawyer. Stratus had ended up with their home, a palatial three story Spanish style mansion in one of the South’s largest and most affluential neighborhoods. She’d “taken him to the cleaners,” as she’d heard said many times before, and was enjoying her new single status as much as anyone had in a long time.

“That’s true,” Ambrose muttered aloud. “I can’t believe that idiot hit her. I especially can’t believe he left himself so open to being gutted in court like that, too.”

Alexa grinned. “That’s what he gets, the jerk.” She was preparing further commentary on the subject, but “What a Man Gotta Do” by THE JONAS BROTHERS began blaring through the speakers. 

“Ooh, Jordan and I jam out to this on the way to school all the time,” Alexa brightly cooed, goofily swinging her shoulders and mouthing the lyrics. 

“I truly wish I could see that,” Dean mused. As much as he loved the tiny girl in the seat next to him, it always made him even happier when she showed her playful, flirty side. Just as he was further contemplating the depths of his affection for her, Alexa began lightheartedly poking Dean in the side to the beat of the uptempo song. 

“Stop,” Dean admonished, though he wasn’t at all serious. 

“You know you love me,” came Alexa’s sultry reply, just before the blonde beauty wrapped both arms around Dean’s free arm, resting her head on his chest.

“I do,” came Dean’s quiet reply. 

The pair spent the remainder of the trip in relative silence, enjoying the music and the humming asphalt underneath them. What neither of them could’ve known, however, was how fundamentally their life together would be altered by a group of radicals, and how Dean’s past wasn’t done with him yet…

  
  
  
  
  
  


_ Welcome to:  _ **_The Happiest Place on Earth_ **


	2. Episode 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We find out more about "Sword of Zion's" intentions and Dean and Alexa get some R&R...

_ Great view numbers on Chapter 1. This isn’t gonna be a super long story, so I hope you’re all ready for a quick, fun ride. _

  
  


Chapter 2

Karl Anderson had really had no idea what he was signing up for when he’d accepted AJ Styles’ invite to the rusted out swamp lair they now found themselves in. There was a large part of Anderson’s psyche that just wanted to leave the compound instead of getting mixed up in this weirdness. 

“Think about the paycheck,” he reminded himself. And, he mused inwardly, at least the operation appeared to be professional. The night before, Gallows and Anderson had thoroughly believed they were in a gutted corrugated metal shack in the middle of nowhere. Now, as the sun rose over the stagnated water surrounding the facility, Anderson could clearly see how mistaken he truly was.

All around him, unfamiliar faces toiled on various preparations, presumably for the upcoming mission AJ had told them about. In one half of the much larger than previously believed hangar, a half dozen welders worked diligently on a church bus, making unseen alterations to the large vehicle’s structure. Shouting voices intertwined indiscriminately, male and female, as the sense that something big was going down began to saturate the surface of the top-secret building. 

“Leesburg Springs Church of Christ,” Anderson read aloud, snickering as he took in the painted lettering on the size of the large Greyhound style charter bus. 

Without a sound, AJ Styles sidled up to his new compatriot. 

“Yep, that’s how we’re gonna pull the security into one spot,” Styles offered, the grin growing on his face. 

“Huh?” Anderson exclaimed, more confused than ever about what he was doing involved in this operation. 

“Look over here,” Styles rebutted, motioning for Anderson to follow him to a plywood table. Splayed out on the cheap yellow recycled wood was a large map of the Magic Kingdom, the premiere destination of Disney’s Orlando complex. Pushing a white pin into the map, Styles began explaining his master plan.

“So, we’re gonna use the bus to ram the front gate. As top-notch as Disney’s structural security is, they haven’t planned for anything like this. Our main strike team will plow through the front gate and secure the entrance and exit points. There’s only the one entrance, so taking it should be fairly simple.”

“Won’t that attract park security?” Anderson inquired, growing skeptical of Styles’ intentions. 

The chestnut haired would-be terrorist nodded enthusiastically. “Yep. A lot of people don’t know this, but Disney security guards pose as tourists. They mill through the park in groups of two, dressed like vacationers from Assbutt Wisconsin or wherever the hell they come from, waiting for trouble to pop up. It would be far too time consuming to root them all out two at a time, so we create a big monstrous event to draw them in, then we put them down quickly.”

“How many people total are you planning on using?”

Styles shrugged, not having gotten too far into the mental logistics of his plan. “The bus will have twenty or so. The rest will have entered the park in small squads, posing as families or tour groups. We’ll designate a time, then all take action at once.”

Anderson nodded. “That’s the group I’m in?”

Styles shook his head in the negative. “No. You and Gallows and some others who should be arriving today are gonna pose as the construction crew renovating one of the  _ Star Wars _ areas. You guys are gonna drive in the panel vans with our weapons. The team on the bus will have assorted small arms and some rifles, but you guys are bringing in the heavy ordinance so we can booby trap the egresses into the command center.”

“Command center?” Karl asked. 

“Yeah, we’re gonna commandeer the underground data and security center. It’ll give us the eyes and ears of the entire park. Once we’re in control, we’ll be able to proactively quell any incursion from the outside.”

Anderson nodded again, this time much more slowly. “That’s fantastic. That’s a really great plan. So Luke and I will drive the vans through the construction zone and meet you at the rendezvous?”

Styles confirmed with a nonverbal shake of the head.

“That’s all great, but how are we posing as construction workers? I’m almost positive they don’t let just anyone onto a job site like that.”

Styles chuckled, having anticipated a question like this. “The foreman’s a guy named Bobby Eaton. Good guy, family man, we don’t think we’ll be able to bribe him.” The charismatic leader paused to take a sip of water, then continued. “He does, however, have three grandchildren. He takes his daughter and her kids out to dinner every Thursday night. Hasn’t changed for two years. We’re gonna kidnap his daughter and grandkids and make sure he gets all the guys we need onto that job site the next morning. If he does what he’s told, he’ll find his family alive and well in a shitty motel room ninety minutes outside of town. If he doesn’t, or if he calls the cops, he’ll find pieces of them off the side of the interstate from here to Atlanta.”

Anderson snickered menacingly. He didn’t personally glean any joy out of slaughtering defenseless women and children, but he admired how thoroughly Styles was covering his bases. 

“So we’ll have a strike team on the bus, a support team led by Gallows and myself coming from the construction site, and various groups milling through the park. Will our guys who are pretending to be tourists have guns?”

Styles grunted in the negative. “No. Too risky. If one or two of us get caught with firearms, they might lock down the park and we’ll miss our chance. We have two specialists whose job it’s going to be to tail Ali and Van Dale. They’ll have weapons from a cache hidden in the park after closing the night before. One of our members was able to get a job as a custodian and has been doing reconnaissance for us. He’ll hide the weapons in a spot that the followers won’t even know until they’re in the park.”

Anderson furrowed his brow. “I think it’s pretty safe to assume that the son of a foreign dignitary and the daughter of the Vice President will have their own security. You think two shooters with nine millimeters will be able to go head on with a six to twelve person security detail?”

Styles chuckled again, his eyes squinting as he reveled in how brilliant his plan actually was. “One, they’ll have MP fives,” he revealed, his smug grin growing wider. “Two, they’ll be some of our most dedicated and experienced combat operatives, and three, they’ll have the element of surprise. Once the bus hits the front gates it’ll be chaos in the park. As long as we can get to Ali before his team can get him to one of the secret doors to the security hub, we’ll have what we need.”

Now Anderson gave a surprised chortle. “And who are the two lunatics you’ve conned into taking on a full Secret Service detail.”

Styles smiled again, an evil, self-impressed Cheshire cat grin. “I’ll show you.”

He led Anderson toward another corner of the immersive hangar, where a half dozen or so serious-looking people were completely focused on the firearms on the table in front of them.

“Karl, this is Lacey Evans and Jaxson Ryker.” Styles gestured toward the pair in the order he introduced them. Evans, a blonde female who was both the most beautiful and dangerous looking woman Anderson had ever seen, gave a curt, tight lipped smile and brusque handshake, while Ryker gave a grunt and went right back to cleaning a rather imposing looking shoulder weapon.

“They’re both former Marines, same as you,” Styles continued. 

Anderson took a moment to absorb his current situation and what the implications of what Styles was planning were. If they opened fire on Secret Service agents, they’d be branded as traitors and executed after military tribunal. Just taking hostages would mean a lifetime in prison. But the money Styles was offering was too good for Anderson to pass up, and if they were able to complete their plan, including the part where the surviving members of “Sword of Zion” drove to the airport in unmarked vehicles with their hostages before boarding fully fueled planes bound for a non-extradition country. It was an incredible, completely irresponsible risk. But if it paid off, the rest of Karl Anderson’s life would be spent in complete luxury.

  
  
  


“Wow,” Alexa Ambrose thought to herself as she took in the view around her. She and her husband had spent the last two hours on the road, driving from their home outside Tampa to Orlando, and both Alexa and Dean were looking forward to checking into their hotel room and beginning their ten days and nine nights of relaxation and fun. Part of both adults still felt bad for not bringing their children, but the waifish beauty had already received several pictures and a video from Trish updating her on what a good time her kids were having. 

“Holy crap,” she heard her husband utter as he stretched out on the room’s king size bed. 

“Holy crap is right,” Alexa affirmed as she gestured toward the large bay window at one end of their room. They’d opted for a “park view” when selecting their accommodation, and their travel agent hadn’t let them down. The Polynesian Village Resort overlooked Lake Buena Vista, where many guests traversed by boat to either a small park side entrance or a dock near the main entrance. Currently, Dean and Alexa both chuckled as a speedboat driven by a park employee in a “Chip” from  **Chip & Dale ** costume with a second employee in a “Pluto” costume waterskiing behind it. 

“That’s pretty funny,” Dean mused, as he sat on the corner of the bed closest to the window. Pulling his wife close to him, he lightly laid a hand on each hip before affectionately bringing her into his lap.

“I’m really, really excited to be here with you,” Lex intimated, her breathy whisper raising goosebumps on Dean’s skin. Alexa slid her toned arms around Dean’s neck, giving a content “hmmmmm” as she planted a line of soft kisses to his jaw and ear. “We have some time before we hit the spa. What’s on your mind?”

Dean grinned naughtily at her as he slid a calloused hand under the hemline of her “Riverview Elementary PTSO” t-shirt. “I can think of a thing or two,” he growled huskily, enjoying his alone time with his spouse. 

Alexa laughed with delight as Dean fell back onto the bed, causing her tiny body to spill alongside his. Her gentle giggle continued until it was replaced by light moans, all at once washed over with arousal as her husband roughly pulled her cutoff denim shorts from her hips past her knees, his body coming to rest directly on top of hers. Breaking their embrace for just a moment, Alexa rose her head up to meet Dean’s eye.

“Baby, this is our first chance to take our time in quite a while. Can we make it really special?”

Ambrose nodded. “You got it, babygirl.” 

And they did. At least twice, over the next three hours.

  
  
  
  


Alexa enjoyed few things as much as the post-coital relaxing she often got with her husband. As she’d gotten older, she’d embraced the need to let her man gather his strength after finishing, and he currently laid with his head on her torso, his body splayed out perpendicular from his own as he nodded in and out of a fitful nap.

Her brow furrowed slightly, however, as she recognized that Dean was transitioning into one of the war-related nightmares she had become so familiar with. Gently laying her hand on the top of his head, Alexa attentively initiated the same procedures she often did when Dean suffered one of his episodes. She’d been warned by a doctor that jostling him awake could potentially lead to a mental health episode, but it was important that he knew his wife was there for him from the second he awoke on his own.

Alexa thought she could make out a few coherent words in his feverish mumbling. Utterances like “detainee,” “Cutler,” and “pullout” were amongst the most oft repeated. Finally, after five minutes or so, Dean popped up from his slumber with a gasp and a wide eyed gaze at the room around him as he gathered his bearings, the sweat now almost gushing from his forehead. 

“Baby! It’s okay, babe,” Alexa called loudly but kindly, reminding Dean that she was in the room and wanted to comfort him. The male Ambrose, after glancing down briefly to observe that he’d perspired clean through his wife beater undershirt, exhaled deeply, his entire body shuddering overtly with a mix of fading terror and the onset of relief.

“You’re okay, baby,” Alexa continued in her soothing voice, ever so lightly wrapping her arms under Dean’s shoulders and guiding him back down to the bed.

“Holy shit, Lex,” Dean finally managed to gasp out after another minute of trying to catch his breath. 

“That one seemed pretty bad,” Alexa fired back, used to these incidents. “Was it bad?”

Dean nodded, reaching for a water bottle next to their bed. “Really bad. Vivid.”

Alexa let Dean take another long drink of water, before directing him to lay his head in her lap. Dean rolled his eyes, but allowed his wife to temporarily take control. Gently massaging his temples and scalp, Alexa placed a loving kiss on Dean’s forehead before continuing. 

“Yeah, I actually understood some of the things you said this time.”

Dean snickered, a sly half smile crossing his face. “What’d I say this time?”

“Oh, just a few words. Stuff like ‘Cutler’, ‘detainee...’” She trailed off. “Was it about that last thing you did before you left the service?”

Dean nodded solemnly. Those memories hadn’t forsaken him, no matter how badly he wished they would. “Yeah. It’s that.”

Alexa sighed, slightly resentful that Dean still wouldn’t tell her what had happened to him his last few months in the service. “I wish you’d tell me. It would help me understand what you were going through.”

The tiny blonde expected the same denial she always got when she asked him about what he’d done in Afghanistan. Dean had never been forthcoming about any of the missions he’d been a part of while overseas, but he’d always flat out refused to talk about the last operation he’d been a part of. This time, for whatever reason, Alexa got a response she wasn’t expecting.

“If I’m gonna tell you about that, we should get drinks from room service. I’m gonna clean up, since I’m sweating like the president at a divorce hearing, and then I’ll tell you as much as I can. You call the front desk and see if room service will send us a bucket of beers or something.”

With that, Ambrose grabbed a change of clothes and towel, darting into the bathroom with a purpose. Alexa, noting that she could use a freshening up as well, hurriedly picked up the room telephone with the hope of a quick interaction with whoever was on the other end.

  
  
  


Dean’s foray into the shower took a bit longer than he’d originally expected. The chief reason for the delay was his wife, clearly enjoying not having children to behave herself around, joining the worn-out Ambrose under the steaming hot water, her hands immediately roaming his body and her mouth returning to destinations it hadn’t visited in some time. Both Dean and Alexa often lamented the rushing of or skipping completely over foreplay when they did have time to be intimate in a house with two children, and Lexi had always been one to love making her man feel good when she and Dean had started dating, and so Dean found himself at almost complete zen, staring at the bathroom ceiling and groaning with euphoria as his wife’s head slid back and forth just below his beltline. 

What followed was the kind of intense love making the two hadn't really experienced since their kids were old enough to open doors and sneak around the house. Sex with kids in the house means quiet and caution during the act, not the loud, fulfilling exercise that was currently in progress in the third floor suite of the nicest hotel either Ambrose had ever stayed in. 

Now, Dean and Alexa found themselves once again in bed, their backs to the headboard, watching tv and alternately laughing over the ludicrous nature of the sex they’d just completed. Before Dean could slip off to sleep again, Alexa remembered what she’d asked Dean and returned them to their intended topic.

“So, before we got so wonderfully sidetracked,” Alexa began with a smirk and a playful elbow to Dean’s side, “you were gonna tell me what happened right before you came home.”

Dean nodded, his eyes locked into a far-off gaze, the events of eight years previous running through his mind as though they’d occurred a week ago.

“So, during one of the last big pullouts, in like 2010 I guess, our department started getting reports of these private defense contractors breaking the rules we’d set up for our troops there. Guys were going into villages and forcing themselves on women, kidnapping kids, indiscriminately killing civilians, whatever they wanted.” The young father paused as he took a long pull from an overpriced bottle of lager, before continuing. “My CO, who I liked a lot, told me he was going to imbed me undercover with one of the biggest alleged culprits of the war.”

“Wait, hold on. You’ve told me what CO stands for before but I can’t remember,” Alexa blurted.

“Commanding officer,” Dean replied gently, winking as Alexa shook her head in disbelief that she’d forgotten that. 

“Anyway, the Department of Defense was allowing guys with less than a year left on their service time to finish out with these defense contractors. So I applied and was immediately assigned to the problem unit.” Dean took another long drink, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before speaking again. 

“First of all, you gotta understand; these private contractors are almost always animals. These are almost unanimously soldiers who have taken a discharge from the army and then choose to go back and fight more. Not because they love their country that much, mind you, but because it pays well. Shit, a lot of those guys weren’t even American nationals. You have to be kind of a piece of shit to want to go overseas and kill for money. I’m a soldier. I did my duty for my country and came home. I can’t imagine ever wanting to leave you and the kids and go back to that shitpile, no matter how much they wanted to pay me.”

“Awww,” Alexa cooed, genuinely touched by Dean’s sentiment. 

“Yeah. Anyway, I get to their forward HQ and it’s a complete shitshow. It looks like a fraternity house for death row inmates. Guys giving each other tattoos, rampant alcohol and drug use, steroid distribution, you name it. I’m immediately made a squad leader because of my ‘recent combat experience.’ My new boss, a gaping asshole named DeWayne Bruce, tells me we have a secret objective he thinks I’d be perfect for…”

“What was it?” Alexa exclaimed, now enthralled by Dean’s tale. 

“A treasure hunt, he said. And he wasn’t wrong. Did you know that a little less than ninety percent of the world’s poppy comes from that area? Afghanistan, in particular?”

Alexa shook her head, not daring to speak and interrupt Dean’s train of thought.

“Yeah. Our job was to locate a local warlord who was using connections in the Army to smuggle his opium into Western Europe and America. Our exact orders were to keep him detained wherever he was and wait for our superiors.”

“We found the guy in some mud hut outside of Marja. It’s ungodly hot there. Ugh. Anyway, we found this guy with his family in their little compound. He had about twenty hired men keeping security and there were supposedly about a hundred more at a village about three miles away. We took the guards out no problem. They were amateurs. We storm the guy’s house and take him outside to wait for our CO. He tells us on the radio hat he’s ‘en route’ and that we should go ahead and cuff his family members while we wait for our CO’s to get there. So we did.”

Dean stopped a moment to finish his beer, pulling a second longneck from the bucket and cracking it open. Glancing over at his wife, he snickered when he saw her eyes wide open in rapt attention at his tale. Dean took a long drink of his fresh libation, before sighing deeply and continuing.

“It must’ve been another two hours before Bruce got there. I found out later they couldn’t use helicopters because this wasn’t a sanctioned op. It was just a greedy, bitter old man going into business for himself. Anyway, this line of three hum-Vees pull up and Bruce jumps out with like a half dozen other real menacing looking dudes. Foreign mercenaries, as it turns out. He takes me and a couple other guys aside and tells us to bring the warlord into one of the side huts.”

“Bruce asks the guy if he speaks English. When he doesn’t answer, Bruce brings in an interpreter. This guy did NOT want to give up his connection, but Blackwater guys can be very persuasive if they need to be. Finally, the guy gives up the name. I still remember it to this day,” Dean added, taking another cleansing breath. 

“What was it?” Alexa asked, leaning forward in anticipation.

“John Morrison. I actually knew him a bit. He was infantry in one of the units we’d been camped with in Kabul before the drawdown. Bruce looks down at the warlord, like he’s never seen anyone he hates so much, and just pulls his sidearm and wastes the guy.”

Alexa gasped in horror at the turn the story took. “What happened after that?”

Dean snickered, once again getting the glazed over look in his eye he often assumed when talking about his time in Afghanistan.

“Bruce tells me and the two guys I was in the hut with to gather our guys. We were going to track down this ‘Morrison’ character and arrest him for narcotics trafficking. It took us less than ten minutes to load in our gear and get our squads in the vehicles. Bruce tells us to roll out, that he’ll meet us at HQ in an hour or so. As I was leaving, I could see those mercs he brought with him killing the warlord’s entire family.”

The look on Alexa’s face turned from interest to sickness. The young woman had been a veterinarian from the day she graduated college, but her strength of stomach didn’t extend to innocent humans dying.

“That night I confronted Sgt. Bruce about what had happened. He said it was important not to leave any opening for potential reprisal.” Dean rolled his eyes, clearly disgusted with what he’d been a party to.

“The next day we found that guy Morrison. Bruce tried to get him court martialed, because he was still active duty, but Morrison’s CO hated private contractors, so he told Bruce to fuck off. That night he called me into his office. Told me to pick my two best covert guys to make sure Morrison had an ‘accident’ while Bruce and Morrison’s CO were at a USO banquet. Bruce alibi-ed himself. I went to that banquet too, actually. Pretty good food.”

“The two guys I picked did their job. The next morning John Morrison was found dead between the latrines and his bunk. We were all questioned, but they could never pin anything on my guys. That same day Bruce asked me to come with him as security detail for a meet with this Air Force pilot. I guess he was the guy that was flying all that dope from Afghanistan to Germany, before getting it on a plane from Rammstein AFB to America.”

“Wow,” Alexa intimated. “What happened next?” She took a long drink of her own beer, having neglected to imbibe for several minutes because of how involved in Dean’s story she was.

“The next few days were kind of a blur. It turned out that Bruce just wanted to take complete control of the opium trafficking out of Afghanistan, and he needed that warlord and Morrison out of the way to do it. I was his right hand the entire time. I flew to Germany with a shipment to meet the connection there, then back to Afghanistan to debrief with Bruce. The day it went to shit was the day my CO in the Military Police got killed. It was a roadside bomb that his transport drove straight over. My new boss pulled me off the case immediately. Said he ‘wasn’t interested in wasting resources on apprehending private contractors.’ He told me if we arrested every Blackwater or other contractor that broke the rules, we’d have more prisoners from our side than Taliban prisoners.”

“That’s bullshit!” Alexa gasped, unable to control herself.

Dean nodded ruefully. “I agree. And I told him as much, but he was one of these young officers that wasn’t there for the real shit and came in thinking he knew everything. So I went about my business, just trying to work out my days until I got to go home. I guess word got out that I was MP, because one night as I was walking back to my bunk from the beer tent I got jumped. It was five or six guys from the Blackwater crew I fell in with. I guess they were pissed that they were getting investigated. They made a mistake, though.”

“What’d they do?” Alexa asked.

“They let me see their faces. From then on I made it my personal business to make sure they got caught trafficking opium. And it worked even better than I thought. All it took was one call to the Secretary of the Army and Blackwater lost their defense contract. Twenty of their guys got arrested for war crimes, and Bruce shot himself in his office before they could detain him. There was one guy who evaded capture, though.”

“Who?” Alexa implored, sensing a big ending to this tale.

“My new boss,” Dean asserted. “Turns out he was the one behind my old boss getting blown all to bits. He chose the route the caravan took and made sure which vehicle got destroyed. Apparently he was working with Bruce and needed to get himself in a position to overlook certain things. The Army wanted to arrest him, but couldn’t get enough evidence.”

“What happened to him?” His wife asked, now leaning against Dean’s arm, fixated on the next turn of the story.

“Someone shot him. He was not a popular man, and one morning they found him with a bullet between his eyes. It’s weird; in a forward operating base housing five thousand troops, not a single soldier heard the gunshot that killed the 1st Lieutenant of the 3rd Military Police platoon.”

“Who do you think shot him?” 

Dean exhaled deeply. “I did.”

He felt his wife sit straight up in shock as she digested this. To his surprise, however, she didn’t bolt for the door or start yelling or even scoot away from him. Instead, she simply exhaled, just as deeply as Dean had, and raised her eyebrows as she processed what her husband had just confided in her.

“Thank you for telling me. I know that must’ve been hard, and I promise not to ever tell anyone that story. Ever.”

“You’re not mad?” Dean asked, in disbelief.

Alexa shook her head. “You’re a good man. I know you better than anyone, and you would never hurt anyone who didn't have it coming. It sounds like the guy you killed had it coming, and I probably would’ve done the same thing if I had the chance.”

Dean shook his head, unable to believe how fortunate he was. “You are truly amazing, Lex. Thanks for not judging me. Is there anything else you want to know before we head to the spa?”

Alexa nodded. “Yeah. Who’s ‘Cutler?’”

“What?” Dean spat.

“When you were talking in your sleep, you said the name ‘Cutler’ several times.”

“I did?” Dean asked, almost humorously. “Huh. Well, the guy I shot, the guy who masterminded that whole caper, was named Steve Cutler.”

“OOOOOH,” Alexa returned, everything making sense in her mind now. After taking another moment to compose herself, Alexa again leaned against Dean’s arm, sliding her left arm inside his right and taking his much larger hand in both of hers. She lightly brought her head against his shoulder, completely content with her husband and how affectionate he’d been so far on their trip. It meant the world to her that he’d been so transparent with his clearly traumatic experience in Afghanistan, even telling the truth about what happened to Steve Cutler. Finally, before she could get out of bed and get ready for their couple’s massage, one final inquiry occurred to Alexa.

“So, I’m very glad you told me everything, and I’m not mad. About anything. I just have one question.” Alexa lovingly squeezed her husband’s hand with hers, letting him know she really wasn’t upset. “Is there any way this could come back on us? There’s not gonna be random MP’s showing up to arrest you anytime soon, right?”

Dean shook his head slowly. “I think the US Army was so happy that someone did their dirty work for them that they didn’t really care how Cutler got what was coming to him. Right after all that went down, I was assigned a patrol outside the stockade until I processed out. That’s why I looked like hell when I met you. I was JUST home from Afghanistan and had been running an outpost. I was very ready to come home.”

Alexa smiled. Every day she spent married to Dean was a good one, but there was something special about the current day, even though it wasn’t yet even half over. As she rose from their luxurious hotel bed to prepared for their spa visit, Alexa couldn’t shake the feeling that this week would end up being the most memorable of their time together….

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gonna try to update this as often as possible.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The tension rises...

_ Wanna give a special hello to my good buddy BalorBabe, who honors me with her readership, friendship, and reviews. You the best, friend. _

_ Great views again. Let’s get some reviews. They give me life. Especially now that I don’t sleep because the baby’s here! _

Chapter 3

There really was no underestimating AJ Styles’ determination when he was this focused. Luke Gallows knew that, having known Styles for years and having done several smaller mercenary jobs with him. But what was currently being planned in that dilapidated tin fortress was truly exceptional. 

There was the Church bus. On the outside, it was simply a normal looking charter vehicle with basic writing on the sides and not a single clue that would give away what the 27 ton land vessel held on the inside. There were three main compartments; a front section that housed one of the steering/driving chambers, but mounted in such a way that the entire front of the bus could flip down into a ramp so the small ATV’s and anti-aircraft batteries could be easily offloaded. 

The middle section would hold the bulk of the personnel, requiring heavy armor plating and bench seating along both sides. The rear was similar to the front, but with the added feature of a fallaway back panel that could separate if any attempt to tow the vehicle was made. All in all, AJ Styles’ design made for a formidable urban assault element.

The question of who would be manning each of these modes of transportation was still up for some debate. Gallows had himself been assigned the five people who would accompany him in his construction van, and he’d been impressed upon meeting all of them. There was Wesley Blake and Buddy Murphy, two men who’d cut their teeth as police officers in Jacksonville before a particularly nasty incident involving a routine traffic stop turning into an on-camera assault had forced both into private security. There, they’d met Styles while running guard duty for a local Republican senator. He’d also have Austin Theory with him, who’d gotten sucked into the militia lifestyle at a young age. Riddick Moss and Mojo Rawley, two former Air Force commandos, rounded out strike team 2. 

Anderson had his team, too. Gallows had no idea who they were, but he was certain they’d be just as skilled and deadly as his own men. Gallows’ focus at that moment, however, was making sure his weapon cache was stowed properly and ready for their incursion. 

Before he could finish, the giant veteran felt a massive hand flop onto his shoulder, prompting him to turn swiftly in order to defend himself. 

Luke wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting when he spun his body around. What he saw was a grizzly sized human almost as tall as he himself was, with shoulders wider than any human being he’d ever encountered.

“Braun Strowman,” the monster growled, offering his hand to shake. 

“Doc Gallows,” came the response, with Luke opting to go with his common nickname. “You gonna lift that bus up when we need it or some shit?”

The hairy behemoth chuckled. “I’m running the ‘tech escort team’.”

Gallows scoffed, raising his eyebrows in curiosity. “The fuck is that?”

Braun snickered again. “You see those four guys in the corner with their laptops? The ones that look like baristas?”

Gallows laughed more loudly this time. “Yeah. What about ‘em?”

“That’s Adam, Roddy, Bobby, and Kyle. They’re fucking nerds, look at ‘em, but there’s not a better tech unit available for what we’re paying.”

Gallows nodded. “That’s what AJ told me. What’re y’all doing once the shit starts flying?”

Strowman nodded. “We’re escorting them to that big-ass mountain and setting up the satellite relay that knocks out Disney’s signal and replaces it with ours. That way we have control over who’s looking at the security cameras.”

Gallows snickered. “Damn, AJ thought of everything, didn’t he?”

Strowman smiled, a terrifying grin that gave even the massive Gallows pause. “Yup. It’s gonna be a turkey shoot.” 

With that, Gallows and Strowman turned and continued their discussion of the upcoming raid. There was no way for either man to know how profoundly their actions would affect a myriad of lives, both innocent and not so innocent…

  
  
  


“....Yeah, that was the same idiot who took over coaching the football team and tried to change everything from a state championship winning team.” Dean Ambrose was flat out chatty. That was the impression Alexa was getting from her husband as they lounged poolside Sunday evening. They’d had a wonderful first day at Epcot Center, with both Dean and Alexa sampling food and alcohol from almost every single one of the represented countries in their “World’s Fair” area. And now an off-handed comment about local high school football had set Dean off, erupted in a stream of consciousness exhibition that amused Alexa as much as anything she could remember.

“Yeah, so this dipshit comes in telling us he’s some championship level coach from Wisconsin. That should’ve been our first clue. Only pale, pasty losers come from Wisconsin. He tells us we’re gonna run a 5-3 defense like we’re in middle school or something, then replaces our all-world running backs with Roman’s cousins. It was idiocy. You’d almost have to intentionally be trying to lose to do anything that stupid.”

“A 5-3?” Alexa echoed. “My knowledge of football ends with what I’ve seen from the sidelines, and even I know that’s a terrible idea.”

Dean nodded before taking a giant swig of his beer. “Yep. Total dumbass. Turns out, guy had never even been to college, much less played in or coached a game at a level beyond Pop Warner. Turns out if you lie on your resume and have your friends pretend to be former co- workers, you can fake your way into just about anything.”

Alexa snickered, pausing to polish off a Mai Thai she’d ordered just a few minutes prior. Dean had been impressed with Alexa’s enthusiasm, both in her alcohol intake and her assertiveness in the bedroom. She grinned, recalling something Dean had told her once about the aforementioned coach.

“Wasn’t he the guy that ended up delivering pizza?”

Dean snickered, finishing his beer and signalling to the poolside attendant that they were ready for another round. “Yeah, until he got fired for forging bigger tips for himself on people’s debit cards.”

Alexa rolled her eyes. “Sounds like a real winner.”

Dean matched his spouse’s eye roll with one of his own. “Yeah. I heard he’s some rent-a-cop somewhere now. What a tool. Being a regular cop would be bad enough, but at least then you’d have Dental insurance.”

“Weren’t you a cop, Dean?” Alexa inquired, a highly amused tone in her voice. Before he could answer, the beleaguered resort employee responsible for hospitality arrived with a tray full of goodies for the husband and wife duo. 

Dean took a long swig from his fresh, nearly frozen island style beer. “I was a military cop. There's a difference. And I regret it every day. I still can’t figure out why we were even over there. It wasn’t to change things for the better, that’s for sure.”

Not wanting Dean to go off on another tangent about his time in the service, Alexa threw all her intellectual weight into a subject change.

“Hey, I told you that Nia and her husband and some other girls from my sorority are meeting us at Magic Kingdom Friday, right?”

Dean snickered and shook his head in mild disbelief. “Yeah. You know y’all are super ‘extra’ when you all get together, right?”

Alexa turned her head up haughtily and tried not to laugh at her husband’s assertion. “No! We just have lots of fun together and don’t pay much attention to our volume level. So there,” she continued in a childish tone of voice, sticking her nose in the air like a five year old refusing to eat her vegetables. 

“Sure, babydoll. Whatever you say. Who else is coming?”

Alexa glanced down at her phone, where she’d apparently been planning via a group text with the friends she didn’t see nearly often enough. 

“Let’s see, there’s Bayley and Roman,” the tiny girl fired back, staring into her phone screen.

“Yeah, Ro said they were gonna meet us. I know Bayley needs a break from those giant half-Samoan kids of hers.”

Alexa giggled, thinking of the last time they’d visited Dean’s childhood best friend and Alexa’s ZBZ sister. The two had met at Alexa and Dean’s reception and immediately hit it off, and their own nuptials followed just over a year later. 

“I can’t wait! I haven’t seen her since we took them dinner after the twins were born last year! Only texts and Facebook!”

Dean snickered, that half smile that was definitely Alexa’s favorite facial expression. “I’m excited to see Roman, too. Anyone else?”

Alexa nodded. “Nia said she and Joe are coming.” She squinted at her phone, again rueing that she’d forgotten her reading glasses. “Mandy and Sammy and… Dana.”

Dean’s eyebrows raised in curiosity. “Just Dana? No Alex?”

Alex Riley had been Dana Brooke’s fiance for most of the last two years, and they were for all intents and purposes a married couple. 

“Yeah,” Alexa returned somberly. “I guess she told Alex to either set a date or take his ring back. He started stuttering and making excuses and so she threw his ring out the front door and told him to follow it out.”

“Hmm,” Dean nodded, digesting this new information. “Do we have any single friends we could hook Dana up with? I’ve always liked her.”

Alexa raised her an eyebrow in amused curiosity. “Oh really? So you were checking her out when she used to wear those super tight shirts at the restaurant?”

Dean scoffed in disbelief. “I mean, everyone was. I’m pretty sure you were when I first met you.”

The tiny blonde rolled her eyes, though it was hard to hide her full blush from cheeks to chest. “I told you I was wild back then. I could claim that I never had a drunken dalliance with one or two of the girls that worked there, but I’ll never tell, and you don’t really want to know, just like I don’t really want to hear about all those girls you hooked up with from those shitty base bars.”

Dean pondered this for a moment, before deciding it was probably in his best interest not to pursue that line of questioning. “So no single friends for Dana, then?”

Alexa rolled her eyes again. “Funny guy.” Without any further comment, she rose from her lawn chair, just a few feet from Dean, and slinked over to her husband, who was currently giving thanks to whatever Deity was on duty that his wife still looked as great as she did in a bikini after delivering two children. 

“Scooch,” the breathtaking pixie demanded playfully, giving her husband a playful swat on his side until he slid to one side of his own lawn chair, before laying down next to him, her front pressed to his side. Ordinarily, Alexa didn’t make a big show of public displays of affection, but there weren’t very many other resort guests around the pool during that time of day, so the gorgeous waif snuggled close to her husband, fully relaxed and excited for her rendezvous with her friends later in the week.

  
  
  


A few hundred miles to the north, in a secure facility in Langley, Virginia, a young Homeland Security analyst named Candice LeRae was really, really hoping that no one needed anything from her in the next few minutes. After all, in the now three years and some change that she’d worked there, she’d really only been needed on the most large scale of operations, mostly big raids against Mexican cartels and one or two possible terror cell investigations. Her valor on one such excursion was what had landed her where she currently found herself; behind a desk, monitoring major airlines and other online transactions for any suspicious patterns. What she presently had was a series of interesting coincidences, but coincidences that she thought bore monitoring. Grabbing for her office phone, LeRae rapidly pressed a series of buttons, connecting her to her boss and waiting for the tone that signalled the line was secure.

“Teddy? Hi, it’s Agent LeRae in analytics. I’ve got some strange movements in Florida that I think you should come up and take a look at. Unless ‘Soldier of Fortune’ magazine is holding a Sadie Hawkins dance, there shouldn’t be this many ‘Level 5 listers’’ in one spot.”

She heard her supervisor chuckle, before agreeing and letting her know he’d be right up. Before hanging up, “Ted” did have one more question for his subordinate, which she was more than willing to answer enthusiastically.

“Yes I would! Iced Americano with nonfat and three Splenda, please.”

Candice grinned at the thought of a free caffeine delivery fluid to give her a slight “pick me up.” That gleeful notion sustained her for the almost exactly eight minutes it took her boss to descend from his upper floor corner office to the dark cubicle Candice LeRae made her living in. 

“What’s up, Candice?” LeRae couldn’t help but crack a grin at the familiar, almost cliche Northern Mississippi drawl of Ted DiBiase Jr. Ted, as he was known around the office, cut an impressive silhouette in his custom tailored pinstripe suits. He was also something of a ladies man, with most of the female employees in that particular field office constantly whispering amongst each other whenever a new female would accompany him on one of their many after-hours bar visits.

“Not too much, Ted. Just wanted you to take a gander at these travel patterns. It’s probably nothing, since it’s Florida and weird shit happens every day, but I’d rather call you down here and have it be nothing than ignore it and have some shit go down.”

Ted laughed, handing Candice her coffee and peering at one of the several large monitors on LeRae’s desk.

Candice felt a surge of nervous energy as she sipped the frosty coffee Ted had brought for her. Exhaling deeply, she furiously stroked at the oversized keyboard in front of her, toggling between programs and screens to put together profiles and mugshots. 

“Okay, so we’ve been keeping an eye on a guy named AJ Styles. Former military, current leader of a small ultra-right wing militia operating in North Florida. No priors, no previous run-ins with the law, but exactly the kind of guy we’re here to detect. Three weeks ago he drops completely off the grid. Sells his house, buys a second vehicle, drives out to the swamp and we lose track of him. Either he committed a very elaborate suicide or he went out there for a reason.”

Ted nodded, trying to stay objective as he stared into the screen. “Okay. What else?”

LeRae nodded. “Sure. So Styles disappears, then two days later Lacey Evans touches down in Orlando.”

DiBiase’s brow furrowed. “I know that name.”

LeRae snickered. “I would hope so. She’s long been the prime suspect in a series of abortion clinic bombings in the Carolinas from two years ago, but they’ve never been able to conclusively tie her to them. Later that day Jaxson Ryker touched down in Tampa and rented a car. The last we see him is on a toll bridge camera between Tampa and Orlando.”

Ted nodded, still processing this information. “What else?”

Candice squinted toward the screen and scrolled down a page, which had two more dossiers ready.

“Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson. Sound familiar?”

Ted shook his head in the negative. “No, not really. Should I have?”

LeRae shrugged, not committing to the notion one way or another. “They’ve been enforcing in Japan for an organized crime outfit called ‘The Bullet Club.’”

DiBiase snickered. “That’s a little on the nose, don’t we think?”

LeRae let out a small laugh as well, understanding Ted’s meaning. “It is. It’s also appropriate. They’ve shown the Osaka branch of the yakuza enough blood to where they closed down and the Club took over.”

“So why aren’t they still there?” Her supervisor inquired.

“Good question. I guess late last year there was something of a  _ coup _ within the organization. Their previous leader, Finn Balor, wound up face down in a reflecting pool outside a well-known mob restaurant. Their new head, Jay White, apparently wasn’t nearly as big a fan of these two. Brought in two Tongans as muscle and fired Gallows and Anderson. My guess is these guys are just free agents looking for their next contract.”

DiBiase pondered all this a moment, before pulling his cell phone from his back pocket and rapidly dispatching a series of texts and emails. “This is all really, really good stuff, Candice. Thank you.” With that, DiBiase, eyes still on his phone, began heading for the door.

“Wait, what’re you gonna do?” LeRae asked, almost sounding desperate.

“I’m gonna send some field agents to sniff around Orlando and see if there’s any reliable intel out there.”

LeRae sprang from her office chair, a mask of determination covering her pretty face.

“Boss, let me go. I delivered on that cartel thing and I’m the one that found these patterns. This is my investigation.”

Ted exhaled deeply. Candice was an excellent agent, but she’d made something of an enemy in an upstairs floor by being too persistent in her search for leads. Bruce Prichard, a man who hadn’t done any actual investigating in several years, was deeply embarrassed when he’d had to be rescued by LeRae during one incursion in Juarez in pursuit of the aforementioned cartel. 

“Look, if I let you go as an analyst, you have to agree not to get in the way of the field agents or overstep your job descriptions. Okay?”

Candice rolled her eyes, but inside she was nearly overflowing with excitement. “Who are you sending as field team?”

DiBiase thought for a moment. “Lynch and Rollins, for sure. Probably Mann and one other from here, and a couple guys from the Atlanta office as well.”

LeRae nodded, satisfied with this answer. “Great. When do we leave?”

DiBiase checked the clock display on his phone, before sending another text. “I am getting you a private plane right now out of our airfield in Arlington, you’ll meet the agents there, and you’ll be in the air tonight. Go home and pack for a few days.”

LeRae’s grin was now glowing bright. “Copy that, sir.” Without another word, the bubbly blonde hurriedly strolled through the office door, determined to make a good impression with this mission.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drop me a line. Love to hear from you.


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